Crime Song Wednesday: Never Going Back to Memphis by Shemekia Copeland

This is the first installment of what will be a weekly column that focuses on crime songs.

It’s simple really. Regardless of genre there are a lot of songs about crime. And a lot of these songs are great crime fiction in their own right. So what I want to do is take a closer look at one song each week and see how it holds up as a piece of crime fiction. Maybe we can all be exposed to some new music along the way.

For each song we will post the lyrics and a clip of the song.

The basic questions will be What’s your opinion and is it successful as a crime story?

It would have been easy to kick this off with a Springsteen song (and we all know that we’ll see some Springsteen here) but instead I wanted to pick something that was perhaps a bit more unknown. This weeks installment looks at the great blues singer Shemekia Copeland and her song “Never Going Back to Memphis”.

After the jump check out a video clip of the song and the lyrics.

I think that the song evokes a certain charged imagery with a hard-boiled language . The tension is high and you are right there with her as she’s hiding out from the cops. The whole song really is pared down to its essential elements like any good hardboiled tale should be.

How about you, what do you think?

Never Going Back to Memphis by Shemekia Copeland

Walked across the room
In a neon light
Dark pair of shades
Blocking out the night

Brian is the non-fiction editor of Spinetingler magazine and one of the fiction editors of Snubnose Press. In addition to Spinetingler his work has appeared in Crimespree magazine and at BSC Review, Galleycat and the Mulholland Books website. He also heads the Spinetingler Award committee.